8/20/15

I am narrowing down what this blog will be about. I think it my dwell on my process of transformation in the coming months. I am beginning to work in a more indirect manner and watching a lot of video and taking a few classes in this direction. Right now I am currently taking from Marc Chatov and completely love his style and color palette. But, I do want my own style. So I find that in the next year I will just be playing around with several techniques I find. Probably moving away from canvas and onto panels, as I bought "a ton" of 1/4 inch 8x4 foot panels, which I can cut to sizes I want and then add the cradles.

I begin with one of my "27 Club" portraits. In this I have Janis Joplin being chased by the horse. Or demon horse. As we all know soon Janis will be "chasing the horse".

In this first canvas I have roughly sketched in the images. I used burnt sienna and yellow ocher with a little Gamisol by Gamblin.

After sketching in, I begin the under painting. A grey grisaille painting is chosen for the background, as this whole section will go very dark. The face, dress and guitar will be warmer so I chose a black made from alizarin, black (my blue) and raw umber (my yellow). This creates a dark purple black.

Now the under painting needs to dry. This will take a few days, especially since I did not use any medium in the paint. The paints in the second stage are from the tubes. It is lean, but "fatter" than the paint in the first canvas. This should be ready by Saturday to glaze. Indirect painting is slower than direct due to the fact that you are applying glazes. But there is a depth you cannot achieve without it, especially to the darks. Not sure my first attempt will turn out right. But I have indirectly been using glazes for years, just not really knowing it.